


Tension Cables

by ballantine



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Cold War, M/M, Post-War, Vienna, a little dick/ron if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:34:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22637665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: It takes a special kind of broken to become an asset of the company, but Lew figures being self-aware might offer a little protection.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Comments: 16
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter 1

“Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, so why should we?”  
-Harry Lime, The Third Man

  
  


_VIENNA 1950_

Nixon was late.

Half an hour was routine discourtesy; forty-five minutes, perhaps a hangover. Dick ordered lunch and finished his crossword. His jaw was aching after ninety minutes; staying to two hours was pure stubbornness. By that point he was nursing his anger, swaddling it in layers to keep it warm.

Damn him, he thought as he stood and collected his newspaper and coat.

Cutlery cracked on uninterrupted. Conversations neither rose nor fell in volume. The woman at the table to his right rocked her baby and murmured something low and loving into its face. The pair of students at the table to his left glanced at him in passing disinterest. The server collected the notes left on his table and nodded a thanks for the tip. No one else in the bustling cafe paid him any mind.

He left and walked to the nearest Stadtbahn station; no one followed.

He found a payphone and stood in intolerable indecision for a few minutes beneath the box's sputtering yellow light. But it was inevitable: he grabbed the phone off the hook, the black receiver nearly cracking beneath his grip, and called the usual number.

As he listened to the line, he tried to visualize the apartment on the other side – did the rings echo into darkened, empty rooms, or did a tousle-headed occupant lounge on the far divan, narrowly watching the insistent phone while slowly smoking down his cigarette. Did he stand and drift closer, did his steps weave. Would he pick the phone up at the eleventh ring?

The eleventh ring came and went. No signal. He replaced the phone on its hook far more gently than he'd picked it up and let himself out of the box. It was off-peak hours and between trains; the street outside the station was empty, which was perfectly normal. His instincts were a mess, useless.

Dick went home to bed.

* * *

He didn't sleep well. His dreams were full of exploding trees and he woke with his eyes red and tacky as if he'd been crying. In the mirror, his skin beneath the razorblade looked gray and rubbery. A mask working itself loose.

“Message for you,” said Green when he arrived at the import-export shop.

Dick walked over to the cramped side table that served as his desk. The night shift had left a mug of half-drunk coffee doubling as an ashtray over his papers, and the smell first thing was enough to turn his stomach. He set the mug on top of the overflowing waste bin near the door and then rifled through the papers.

He looked up at Green. “No cipher?”

The other man didn't turn from his paperback Western, just waved vaguely towards the door. The mail slot. Dick nudged through the pile with his foot like he was probing for a landmine, finally unearthing, of all things, a postcard.

He squatted and picked it up. The front was a bright pastel drawing of the Riesenrad, the giant Ferris wheel over in Leopoldstadt. The sight of it had his fingers tightening on the card. He fumbled it over – no postage, someone had dropped it into their slot.

He read the short message scrawled on the back.

Green didn't seem to notice anything amiss as Dick carefully straightened up and gathered his things. The man had always been sloppy.

* * *

 _Well, what do you make of me_ , Lew asked him once, early on in their association.

Dick regarded him closely, considering his reply. His dark hair had worked itself loose from the hold of his hair paste and was falling over his forehead. With the shadow of his evening stubble, he looked rumpled and relaxed. He had one of those faces that was always a step away from debauched. Dick liked looking at him, and he didn't know what to make of that.

 _Smart, youngish_ (the qualified description earned a surprised laugh) _expat from a good family._ _Bohemian tendencies, potentially dissident sympathies. Speaks a few languages._ He paused. _The Soviets will think they can turn you._

Lew sounded almost curious then _. You don't sound too worried they'll succeed._

_I'm not._

_What did I do to deserve such faith?_

_You know the company doesn't take anything on faith. They'll be watching you too._

_You're killing me, Dick. You're too honest. Who let you into the CIA?_

* * *

It could be a ruse, an attempt to draw Dick out into the open so they could snatch him up, fair and square. His habitual caution overrode his hammering alarm, and he located a phone in a shoe shop five streets over. He called Harry Welsh over at the embassy.

As he waited to be put through, his eyes drifted with superficial calm around the shop, compulsively cataloging every face. Had he seen that hat on the other side of the street earlier?

In his ear, the other end of the line hummed and clicked, and a familiar voice reported unhappily, “Welsh.”

“Harry,” said Dick, and no more.

A pause: a line of rope fluttering and unwinding through the air and Dick praying it will be caught. Harry offered up a muffled and heartfelt curse. It felt a little funny, moments like this. There had to be half a dozen nationalities and several more languages crowded between their respective positions in this city, but still, there in his ear: a small town in Pennsylvania.

“Harry,” he said again.

“So it wasn't you boys, then,” Harry said, and he sounded very tired. “He's gone, Dick. Yesterday in the afternoon. We were at lunch.”

“He left?” he asked. He fixed his eyes upon the shoe display in the window, where a fine leather loafer gleamed in the pale sunlight. Odds were even it came from a back alley deal somewhere, said a voice in his head that sounded a lot like Lew.

“Left? Dick, are you listening? They took him.” Someone said something in the background, words unintelligible except for the sound of Harry's name. He cursed again and said, very quickly, “I gotta go – but Dick, did you hear me?”

“Yeah, Harry, I heard you,” said Dick quietly, looking long past the shoe in the window to the street outside, and the man in a long, heavy coat loitering on the sidewalk. “They took him.”

“Guess I can't say I'm surprised. You surprised?”

A man in this business was never surprised, not until the end.

“I don't know what I am, just now.” Someone on Harry's end spoke again, more insistent. Dick said sharply, before he could hang up, “Hey, Harry? Did Nix say anything?”

“Not much. Uh, some joke about a gulag, you know how he was. Noose could be around his neck and he'd have some commentary to offer the hangman.”

Already the past tense. Things moved quick in Vienna, and people doubly so.

Dick hung up the phone. He eyed the man standing across the street. He turned to the shopkeeper with cash proffered between two fingers and an inquiry about a back door on his lips.


	2. Chapter 2

_VIENNA 1948_

It takes a special kind of broken to become an asset of the company, but Lew figures being self-aware might offer a little protection.

Asset. Source. The company talks about people like him in a special bloodless way that screws the English language's objects and subjects all to hell. An asset is something to be used or traded. Agency: fungible. So he is not necessarily surprised when he wakes up one morning to discover he has been transferred to a new handler without so much as a by-your-leave.

He is mashed face down on his bed, eyes still closed. He can tell with the sixth sense of the grievously hungover that the room around him is bright with early afternoon light. He wants none of it.

“Here, drink this,” a voice says, and hello, someone is in here with him. Lew turns his head against the mattress and slits his eyes open. Even rolling his eyeballs up to see the speaker hurts.

A tall redheaded man slants across his vision, arms folded and expression curiously blank.

“Did we have fun last night?” Lew asks blearily. He's definitely done worse.

His visitor cocks his head. “Is that the royal we?”

“Never mind.” Lew pushes himself up onto his forearms. He stares dully at the glass of cloudy liquid the man has placed beside the bed. “What is that?”

“Something you should drink. All of it.”

The man doesn't sound Soviet, but then, Lew isn't sure the Americans wouldn't try to drug him either. He mentally shrugs and reaches for the glass. It tastes flat and a little salty. He gets through half of it before his body rebels and he has to take a break to clench up and power through the nausea.

He catches the man's surprised look. “What?”

“Nothing, just. You always drink unknown concoctions given to you by strangers who've broken into your apartment?”

Lew's smile feels like a confession. “Guess you have a trustworthy face.” He takes a breath and finishes off the drink. He waggles the empty glass at the man, glimpses a twitch of what might be an answering smile, and slumps back down on the bed. “Who are you?” he says in a grunt, closing his eyes again.

Under the pounding pain in his head, he distantly wonders if he is wearing any clothes. His body hurts too much to be sure. He creeps his non-dead hand down to check and yep: that is one bare ass. He wouldn't care except he knows when he passes out like he did last night, he doesn't usually bother tucking himself into bed first. Someone pulled the sheet over him.

“My name is Richard Winters. I'm taking over Vienna station.” Lew makes a noise of polite interest, and he adds, “I'll be your contact from this point forward.”

“What happened to Sink?” he asks, not particularly caring.

Dick walks over to the window on the far side of the room and looks out into the street. Lew sneaks a quick look at him, eyeing the gleam of his hair in the direct light.

“He's being transferred back to Washington. He's up for a promotion.”

He turns away, stomach twisting. “Mm, good for him.”

“You could've heard the news direct from the man himself, if you'd attended your scheduled check-in this morning.”

Lew slept on the arm wearing the watch and so has to use his other hand to haul it up into the light. He squints at the time and then he squints at his intruder. “That was only an hour ago. You came all this way because of an hour? I'm touched.”

Maybe he shouldn't needle the man like this right off the bat. Some people believe in the importance of first impressions; well, Lew does too. He believes in setting the bar low enough to skip over.

Except it's not working. When he finally sits up and looks over to Winters, the man looks only patient and maybe a little amused. Lew scratches his chest absently and tries on a grin. It feels confused, a little unsure.

Winters blinks and smiles quietly back.

Lew thinks: oh, hell.

* * *

They get along. They get along real well.

Of course they do. What else could Lew possibly expect two years into his slow slide into an Austrian gutter. Just when he's maybe starting to mix up who to pay off and who to blackmail, when the lines between the Allied forces are shifting and reforming and it's all a race to see who gets what – they send him a handler who believes in his country and wants to drag Lew kicking and screaming along.

It would be so much easier if Lew could write him off. But Dick is not naive. His love of country doesn't come without reservations – but he genuinely thinks every boy who ever joined up to fight in the war was a hero. He's the only man Lew's ever met who doesn't mind paying his taxes, for christ's sake.

In Lew's experience, both during the war and after, the worst kind of agents were the fanatics. It was better if you didn't know if you believed in anything. To have the smarts for the work but a passion for nothing that couldn't be had for a little money. There was control in that, and safety too.

He tries to avoid talking to Dick about this sort of thing, steers all conversations well away from anything philosophical. Like he might be able to hide his big emptiness from his handler, what a joke. It comes out after a while anyway. Dick's reaction is worse than anything Lew could've expected – he doesn't believe him.

“Oh, brother, don't try to paint me as some kind of patriot,” he says over dinner one evening. That's something they do, now and again (and again and again). Lew never shared so much as a stick of gum with Sink. “Please. I beg of you. I mean, how many state secrets do I have to scatter across the inter-allied zone to get labeled a proper scoundrel?”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Nix. Pass the salt, please.”

Lew passes him the salt, setting it down with enough force to shake out a few crystals on the tabletop. Dick reaches for it, but Lew doesn't relinquish possession. He leans over the shaker and asks, “What do you think I am? Tell me, Dick, what do you see when you look at me?”

He doesn't know why he doesn't let it go. Why Dick thinking his aims are noble bothers him so much.

Dick meets his eyes, surveying him with a deceptively easy gaze. But Lew has been able to read him since the day they met, and he thinks Dick might be unsettled.

“I see a smart, young...ish,” and here Lew laughs and Dick's eyes flick away, but not before he sees the warmth in them, “expat from a wealthy family. Bohemian type, talks like a radical. Speaks French and German and a growing amount of Russian. The Soviets will try to turn you.”

“And you don't think they'll succeed. Who knows, maybe they have already.”

“No, I don't think so. Can I have the salt now?”

Lew leans back and shoves it forward in the same breath. “Salting that steak is a crime, by the way.”

“Well, it's a good thing we're in Vienna, then, isn't it?” says Dick dryly, one of those surprising flashes of cynical humor that keeps Lew hooked.

He shakes his head. “You're killing me, Dick. You're so honest. Who let you into the CIA?”

* * *

“What made you stay,” Dick asks him once, eight months or so into their partnership, or relationship, or whatever the hell it is. “After the war, you could've gone home, or anywhere, really. Why come here?”

They are taking a walk. This is another thing they do from time to time. Dick gets to stretch his legs and Lew gets to pretend they're not just walking together, but _walking together._ He keeps his hands strictly in his pockets when he's not fiddling with a cigarette. Dick walks with his clasped behind his back.

“I could ask you the same question,” he says.

Dick makes a dissatisfied noise. He doesn't like it when Lew dodges his questions. “My answer's easy. The Army asked me if I wanted to stay on, make a career of it. I didn't have any other offers, so I did. A colonel I worked under took a job with the company and he took me with him.”

Lew is bothered by this recitation of events. Seems to him Dick lives his life with a funny sort of passivity. Other men make decisions about what's going to happen to him, and he goes as hard in that direction as he can, like he's hoping velocity will break him from the plotted orbit. Like his thing with the paratroopers. (Christ, the paratroopers.)

They are walking along a quay that had been reduced to rubble during the war. Reconstruction hasn't reached it yet except to clear the worst of the debris and make it safe to walk around. You got used to seeing craters in the street and broken posts and statues. Got to be you expected them, even.

Lew gestures at the Maris bridge about a quarter mile in the distance. “You know, someday Vienna and all of Europe will be completely rebuilt. They'll cover up any remaining scars, slap some plaques around. Call it done.”

“Yes, I suppose they will.” Dick trains a thoughtful, pale gaze on him. “That bother you?”

“Nah, it's not like that.” He doesn't know if he's lying. He tries not to lie to Dick when he can help it. He tries again. “I think I'll miss it though. The Vienna they're building won't be the city I know.”

“Stay long enough and you'll know it.”

He huffs a laugh. _Know many double agents with long shelf lives?_ By the strong frown that overtakes Dick, he almost thinks he said it aloud.

He hurries the conversation along. “Anyway, what made me stay? I don't know, except the idea of going back to New Jersey alone held no appeal. There was no shortage of intelligence work, as you know – so. Here I am.”

They pass the Maris bridge. It will improve traffic and ease a lot of logistics migraines when it reopens soon, but he knows it won't be the same.


	3. Chapter 3

_VIENNA 1950_

Dick didn't return to the import-export shop or his apartment. He extinguished three hours in a pub, buying drinks he gave to a drunk in the back corner while considering the folded Riesenrad postcard.

 _If you decide you want to keep him_ , Speirs had written, plus a date and time for that afternoon.

“You ever been on it?” the drunk asked him. He spoke broken German – he was not a local, but another bit of debris washed up in Vienna after the war. He looked over Dick's shoulder at the face of the postcard.

Dick said, in better German but with a worse accent, “Once. The view is spectacular, isn't it?”

“I wouldn't know – I don't like heights. Do you like heights?”

“They don't bother me.”

Dick was a paratrooper in the war. Lew loved that. Something about the image of Dick jumping out of a plane used to really tickle him.

Dick folded the postcard away into his pocket. He put down money for one more round. The drunk blinked at it, counting it out with his eyes, and then looked up at him with halfhearted curiosity.

“Where're you going?” he asked.

To do something big and crazy, Dick mentally replied, but he didn't say anything aloud. He was addressing a different drunk.

* * *

Four months ago, they fought. Closest they ever came to a quarrel, anyway.

An operation had gone bad, someone had died – a woman, Dick thought. Lew sat at a table in a safe house outside Vienna and chain-smoked his way through a black mood. His eyes were like they got sometimes, in low periods – dark like they could suck the light out of a room, disappear it forever.

He was halfway through a bottle, though when Dick showed up he made a point of leaving it on the kitchen counter. It wasn't like him to care about drinking in front of him, so Dick didn't know what to make of it.

 _She thought we were going to give her a better life_ , Lew said. He stubbed out his cigarette on the table and it joined the pile of its brothers' corpses. He smiled bitterly up at Dick. _Why would she believe that?_

Dick said, _I suppose it's what you told her._

It was the standard offer. Even with the American government pouring billions into Europe, there were a lot of people falling behind, slipping through the cracks. Some people never recovered from seeing their homes and cities destroyed, their neighbors shooting or shot or rounded up and disappeared. Some people couldn't get past it, and they only wanted to get out. America seemed so bright and clean, at times.

_She wanted comfort, wanted me to – it wasn't enough to give me the papers, she wanted that – that fucking human connection, some small sign she wasn't alone._

Dick said nothing.

 _Do you think I slept with her?_ was asked around a fresh cigarette. His lighter clicked and the smoke obscured his eyes.

Dick closed up. He only did this around Lew and his moods. With any other asset he maintained a friendly, professional facade. If he was being objective and mission-oriented, he would tell Lew he believed he did everything he thought was necessary, and that it was all right.

Instead, Dick reached for the bottle of whisky on the counter. He hefted it and looked over at Lew, who was watching him, arrested. Maybe he thought Dick was going to take a drink. Maybe he expected him to smash the bottle. Instead Dick carried it over and put it down in front of him.

 _Go ahead, finish what you started_ , Dick told him.

 _What a fucking pal you are_ , Lew said, lowly.

* * *

They met at the base of the Riesenrad. Speirs smiled at him cordially and bought two tickets. They found an empty gondola and watch the ground grow distant as the wheel slowly set off.

Dick had seen the file on Ron Speirs three times; the first to familiarize himself with the players in Vienna, and the second and third times to add to the file himself. It was thick enough to do some damage if one were to use it as a bludgeon. That would be the only damage it might inflict – the company certainly had shown no interest in using it to stop the man's activities. Lew said they were biding their time for when Speirs might become useful, at which point the government would suddenly remember their own laws and the trap would snap shut around him.

A former U.S. Army soldier, Speirs had remained in Europe after the war, putting the list of contacts he'd collected to work. He had an eye for fine metals and art and few scruples. As the black market in Vienna flourished, so did his racketeering. If one needed something that couldn't be obtained through official channels and had money to spare, Speirs was your man.

Lew hated him, which was strange in and of itself. Normally, Lew didn't waste time disliking people. He was not like Dick. Maybe he reserved all of it for himself, Dick didn't know. But he didn't like Ron Speirs.

Dick, oddly, found he could work with him. If nothing else, Speirs was efficient.

He stood before Dick now, dressed finely in a pressed suit and a nice coat that did good things for his shoulders. His hat was tossed off to the side on a seat; his dark hair was so perfect, it didn't look like it had seen the inside of that hat all day. He smiled at Dick, perfectly pleasant while his eyes remained cold. After paying for the tickets, he hadn't said anything. He was waiting for Dick to speak.

“Where is he?” he asked.

“With the Russians.” Speirs idly watched the passing beamwork of the wheel, but it was all for show. His body was oriented to Dick like an attack dog waiting for the call. “You gonna ask if he went voluntarily? It's the big question, isn't it? Four years of Lewis Nixon playing footsie with every power in the city, keeping everyone on the hook, wondering which side he's really on.”

“I know which side he's on,” said Dick. “Where is he?”

Speirs smiled again, and now it was as cold as his eyes.

The gondola glided over the fairgrounds and began another ascent.

“It's going to cost you. The Soviets are very fond of their new toy and they're going to want to take him home as soon as possible. Tomorrow morning there's a train leaving for Brno, and once they got him on that, I don't have to tell you – hey, Dick,” he asked, abruptly human again, “is the company actually backing you on this?”

He ignored the question. “Can you keep him off that train, Ron?”

“It's going to cost you,” he said again.

“How much?”

Speirs didn't seem to take any special satisfaction out of the number he gave Dick. Maybe he didn't think anything would come of it – maybe he hoped nothing did. Speirs didn't care for Lew either, Dick remembered.

He didn't let his nerves show on his face, his sudden fear that his one lead would suffer a change in mood and decide he didn't want to help after all.

The gondola slid back into port. Dick told Speirs to wait for his call and left. Speirs might have looked strangely small, standing next to the wheel, but Dick didn't look back to check.


	4. Chapter 4

_VIENNA 1949_

Lew's nominal job is a posting with the American legation, working alongside Harry Welsh. He gets on great with him. Harry thinks he is in bed with the Russians (literally and figuratively), but it doesn't impact their friendship much. That's Vienna for you.

They've worked together for almost a year when Dick takes over as his handler. Harry knows Dick has security clearance and that he was in the Army. He probably puts it together that he's with the company, but he doesn't say anything. Harry is very good at minding his own business. He claims it's the only way to stay sane and happily married.

But something changes. At some point, maybe a year in, Harry breaks his own code and tries to talk to Lew about Dick.

“You know, I think Dick is a good man.”

“And the sky is blue.” He glances at Harry and rolls his eyes. “I'm sorry, what? I thought we were exchanging statements of the obvious. Hey, give me some of that, will you?” He nods to the slim bottle sitting in the open drawer of Harry's desk. Harry's one nod to respectability was he never stashed anything larger than a pint of whiskey in the office.

“Only because you're wounded,” says Harry as he passes it along. His words have the configuration of a joke, but his tone is uneasy. Lew came into work that particular morning with a finger in a splint and a black eye.

“How long do you think you can keep this up, Nix?” He could be asking about one of half a dozen things – the injuries, the Russians, the Americans. Dick.

Lew poured the whiskey into his desk mug, watched the golden liquid overwhelm the dregs of his morning coffee. He passes the bottle back and takes a drink.

“The city won't tolerate four in the jeep for too much longer,” is what he says to Harry. “I imagine the decision will be made for me eventually.”

Harry is troubled by this response. He fiddles with the cap on his bottle, spinning it restlessly around the rim. He says eventually, “It's not just you, though, is it? It's Dick too.”

He doesn't know what Harry knows, or thinks he knows. But there's an accidental emotional truth to his worry, and it stays with Lew afterwards. He's been willing to spin his wheels in Vienna for years, slowly digging in a deep rut. But at some point he knows Dick will shoot ahead; he might not be able to keep up, and this bothers him.

* * *

A few months later, it's a fine Sunday afternoon and Lew is indulging himself. Theoretically, they should not be seen together too often, but this never stops Lew from asking Dick out, or Dick from saying yes. And so long as Dick keeps saying yes, Lew's going to keep asking.

“You've never been to the Prater? Jeez, Dick. You need to get out more.”

He looks pointedly around them, smiling. “I get out plenty.”

They cross onto the fairgrounds, following the trampled lawn to the most popular destination.

“You know, the Weiner Riesenrad is the largest Ferris wheel in the world? And you've been here eighteen months and haven't seen it. We're fixing that today. Consider yourself privileged, it was damaged during the war and the cheapskates only fixed half the gondolas.”

“Where are their priorities,” murmurs Dick.

“Exactly.”

Once in view of the wheel itself, Lew's nerves reacquaint themselves with his stomach. He falls silent after buying the tickets. Although he despises himself for the tell, he has to sneak a quick drink once they are stationed alone in one of the carts.

He'd woken up that morning knowing he was going to ask Dick. If the pattern held, the other man would say yes. They see each other all the time anyway; there is no reason, security or otherwise, for him to say no.

When he looks around, Dick has seated himself in the far corner and is watching him with a certain gleam in his eyes, like he already knows everything. Lew stares.

He is the best thing in Vienna. Europe can imagine and rebuild a thousand lost treasures and none of them will hold a candle to Dick Winters sitting bundled up against the autumn air, nose pink beneath his ridiculous Tyrolean hat.

Dick asks him what's wrong, and Lew says something in response, thoroughly distracted. He approaches him and some perverse corner of his brain starts calculating odds like he's zeroing in on a mark. He only knows one way to shut up that voice. He drops to his knees.

Dick goes still. He says, “Nix?”

Lew puts his hands on his thighs, feels how the muscles jump beneath the brushed wool of his trousers. Dick doesn't pull away.

“You know, you're funny, Dick. I think a lot about you sitting back home in Pennsylvania, deciding to get things over with and join up. You wanted the training, you wanted to be prepared. But that wasn't enough, so you joined the paratroopers. And to everyone else it looks like you're just being your usual diligent, dutiful self.”

“Nix – ” he starts hoarsely, but Lew's not done.

“You keep bottling up all your wildness until you're ready to blow, then you go and do something big and crazy. You wind up jumping out of a plane into occupied Normandy.”

“Lew, I don't understand.”

“Yes, you do,” says Lew simply. “I'm asking you to jump with me.” He grins and shrugs a little. “Not much of a sales pitch, I know. But what the hell. What do you think?”

He has shuffled closer in millimeters, and his chest now brushes Dick's knees, his coat falling to the sides and enclosing the warmth between them. He can see a first response stirring in Dick's lap, and it takes all his hard-earned patience to wait for confirmation.

Dick stares at him for what must be half a rotation, beams and tension cables scrolling behind his head. Lew's always been able to read him, but he finds he can't just now.

Then Dick says quietly, “It's a bad idea, Lew.”

He doesn't sound even a little torn up about it. He sounds like it's easy to say.

Their cart glides through the underside of the wheel, its shadow passing over Dick's face.

Lew pushes to his feet and gets some distance between them. Neither of them say anything. His steps feel unsteady, floaty like the wheel is spinning a lot faster than it is. He puts himself over by the door and looks blindly out at the sprawling fairgrounds. The people below look like tiny dots, utterly inconsequential.

He clears his throat and says, “Think that movie might've ruined this wheel for me. I keep picturing Orson Welles popping up to shove me out the door.”

"I wouldn't mind meeting Orson Welles," says Dick, in a lousy approximation of his usual wryness.

Lew laughs, too loud. “Oh, well, in _that_ case,” he says, and then no more because he can't, he just can't pretend.

* * *

He gets a little more careless at the job after that. He doesn't mean to, it just happens. He slips up and the Russians catch more of a document than they are supposed to; he doesn't listen properly and one of his contacts gets killed.

“She wanted to think she wasn't alone,” he tells Dick. He's trying to explain, trying to get across some fundamental point, and he can feel the bitterness in his smile, taste the venom beneath the whiskey on his tongue.

There was nothing remarkable about his contact's desires, they were the same as anyone's, but in death they seem impossibly small and sad. He can see a question forming in Dick's eyes, a question he will never ask because in some stupidly honorable part of his brain, he thinks he doesn't have the right.

So Lew turns it around and poses the question himself. Dick's answering anger doesn't feel good, but it feels warmer than any drink.


	5. Chapter 5

_VIENNA 1950_

Dick went to the import-export shop. It was late, and the night shift had come in. Horace was slumped in Green's customary chair, head back and loudly snoring. Perrin sat beside the cipher machine, playing Patience; he looked up when Dick came in, eyes following him across the room to the telephone.

“You hear any chatter out of the Russian zone this evening?” Dick asked him. He didn't wait for an answer, but picked up the phone and began dialing.

“I hear Washington's not happy with you,” replied Perrin. He watched Dick for a few seconds longer before deliberately turning back to his cards.

Dick gritted his teeth. He stared into the dusty corner of the room as the line engaged. The cobwebs had grown two feet since he last noticed them. He wondered what it said – about the job, about them – that the shop was always in such a shambles and none of its occupants cared enough to clean up. He'd always been a tidy person, before.

The line clicked and Sink said, “You are making me late for supper. What is it?”

“Sir,” said Dick. “I apologize, but it's urgent. I'm requesting approval and funds for the extraction of an asset.”

Of all the reactions he prepared for, silence was not one of them. It stretched out, tense and painfully opaque. Dick pressed the receiver harder to his ear, as if it might help him catch a clue.

After an interminable wait, Sink cleared his throat and said only, “Nixon.”

Dick's breath caught. He said, “Yes, sir. The Soviets picked him up yesterday."

“He defected, Dick,” said Sink, and some channel in his ear buzzed and went dead, like all the treble in a record player cutting out.

He began, “Sir, I don't know what report you've been given, but – ”

“Twenty thousand appeared in his bank account four days ago. We sent men by his apartment, and it was cleaned out, scrubbed.” The nascent sympathy in Sink's voice sharpened abruptly. “Green says you've been acting squirrelly. I know you had every confidence in the man, and this must come as a great shock. It happens to the best of us in this line of work. It's what makes what we do so hard, the human element.”

Sink continued in that vein for a while longer, but Dick mostly stopped listening. The cobwebs seemed to thicken in the corner of his eye. Behind him, Horace's snores grew louder. He thought he could even hear the bend and slap of Perrin's cards.

“...you should get some sleep, Dick. It must be almost midnight over there? We'll pick this up again tomorrow – there'll be an inquiry, of course... pure formality, no one blames you. I think we all knew Lewis Nixon was a troubled man. Get some sleep, we'll discuss this more in the morning.”

“Sir,” Dick said again, but this time in goodbye. He set the receiver down.

Perrin's hands were held arrested over his game as he eyed Dick. “So what're you going to do, now your favorite little fairy's fluttered home to Moscow?”

Dick didn't react. Half the reason Perrin hated him was because he never reacted.

“I'm going to go get some sleep,” said Dick, like it was all easy. He felt like he was playacting, mimicking Lew.

* * *

Five months ago, Lew dragged him out to the Prater in Leopoldstadt to see the big wheel. _Biggest in the world. Can't believe you've never seen it, you've been here eighteen months._

Dick liked he knew how many months he'd been there. He knew Lew was just good with numbers and details, had to be for the job. It was probably only habit to be so specific. He liked it anyway.

Lew told him the wheel had only been rebuilt a couple years previous. All the locals bemoaned the loss of half the gondolas, but it was a prideful complaint rather than a crowding one – few Viennese could afford to ride it. Throngs of delighted children had been replaced with hoods and military and criminals, tall men in long concealing coats.

Lew and Dick were two such men that day. They waited for an empty cart. Lew took a hit from his flask as they stepped inside.

They lurched out of the port into the air, and Lew paced restlessly, looking out over the fairgrounds. _I think that movie might've ruined this for me. Feel like I can't stand close to the door. Keep picturing Orson Welles popping up to maybe shove me out of it._

 _I wouldn't mind meeting Orson Welles_ , said Dick.

 _Oh, well, in_ that _case._

Dick was in a good mood, but very tired. He sat himself down on the bench lining the cart and watched the brilliant blue sky swing past Lew's shoulders. He wondered if he could convince him to go skydiving with him some day.

_You seem agitated, Lew. What's up?_

The other man drifted closer. _You can't guess?_

_You don't exactly wear your heart on your sleeve._

_Eh, no room. My vices are already there._ A new watch, large and expensive, glittered when he moved his wrist.

Dick was still looking at it, wondering when he got it, when Lew sank to his knees in front of him and put his hands on Dick's thighs. They felt incongruously heavy, like they were pinning him to the bench. Dick blinked down at him.

_Nix?_

Lew's eyes were huge and dark. _You know, you don't drink, you don't swear. You're a real boy scout –_

_I was never a boy scout._

– _but I think what you do is, you bottle it up. All your wildness, you bottle it up until you're ready to do something big and crazy. And that's how you wind up jumping out of a plane into occupied Normandy._

_I don't understand._

Lew's hands tightened, and Dick thought he could feel it in his spine. One of those strange moments of nerve transference. His whole body felt engorged, anticipatory.

 _Yes, you do,_ Lew said. _I'm asking you to jump with me._

The watch on his wrist kept catching the light, and it was dazzling, it kept getting into Dick's eye and making him see sunspots. Lew on his knees in front of him was decadent, almost sordid, and it made his stomach twist between yearning and sick.

Dick can't remember what he said, just that it was a _no_. He can't remember Lew getting up, whether he dusted the knees of his trousers, whether he cracked a joke as they waited for the gondola to come to a stop and release them.

He only remembers Lew's face, wide open as he waited for him to answer; cut loose into a free fall after Dick did.

* * *

He didn't get any sleep. He stopped by his apartment to collect alternate identity cards and passports, a change of clothes, and his spare gun.

He stopped and considered the gun in the darkness of the room. It was familiar to his hand, and he never thought much about the sight of it in his bedside table. Last year Lew had confessed, with a flat tone Dick found impossible to interpret, that he had never killed anyone. He had never even fired his gun.

 _What – never?_ Dick had asked. _Not even during the war?_

_Not a round._

He said – much later, when he was much drunker – that it took belief to kill a man. Twisting smile on his face, thick lashes lowering over his eyes. Somehow he'd managed to twist this singular virtue into a failing, into further proof of his tarnish.

Dick, who didn't have a number for the men he'd killed in battle, and who had killed five outside of it, found this almost blasphemous. It took his breath away.

Standing in his apartment for the last time, he reflected that he never got that breath back.

As station leader, he had access to the Vegas cache, a locally-held slush fund meant for emergency covert operations. Along with his private savings, it amounted to half of Speir's asking price.

He located the man in a nightclub. It was after two, and the band was just warming up, a swell of kinetic sound filling the room. Bodies moved across the floor, holding one another closer than permitted in daylight. Dick kept his eyes fixed on the occupied seat at the far end of the bar, and slid past a dozen intimate moments untouched.

“You still move like an Army man,” Speirs greeted him with. The line of his body was softer than it had been, the sharpened blade of his expression blurred with drink and the hour. When he met Dick's eyes, it was only after a long journey up his body. He grew slow when he drank, doped in a way Lew never got.

“So do you,” said Dick. It was true; he could recognize Speirs's walk across a crowded plaza.

Speirs waved a hand and sighed, like he wanted to get this over with. “Well?”

“I can only get half the money.” Dick said it plainly and without anguish. His feelings on the matter wouldn't improve his chances of working out a deal.

Speirs paused, several thoughts flashing across his face in quick succession. He said, slowly, “And yet you still came here. The company isn't backing you, is it?”

Dick said, “I figure a favor owed of me should cover the missing half.”

“Jesus,” Speirs said. He laughed, a bewildered sound. “Jesus, I never thought – he really worth this to you?”

“Is it a deal?”

Speirs sobered. He stood from his seat, one hand hovering over the chair at his back like he might have need of it for balance. He looked down at his drink and then up at Dick, and in that small distance some of his customary chill reclaimed its place. He offered his hand, and Dick shook it.

“I'll make the call,” said Speirs.


	6. Chapter 6

_VIENNA 1950_

Lew drifts in and out of consciousness.

He catches snatches of conversation around him, notices when it switches from Russian to German but his brain is too foggy to work a translation. His face feels like pulp, his mouth won't close properly. His leg is on fire – he was shot?

They move him twice while he is awake, but at least once more when he is not, judging from his surroundings. The wallpaper changes from beige to garish between slow blinks. Once, he thinks there is music.

It's quiet when he surfaces again and finds Dick sitting beside him on the mattress. Lew's eyes flicker up to him; he is watching his chest rise and fall and doesn't notice Lew is awake. He doesn't look like he has slept in two days, or shaved in longer. Distantly, Lew marvels. He has never seen Dick's stubble.

His breath hitches on a laugh. It hurts like hell. Dick's eyes shoot up to his and widen. He leans in close, his stale breath rolling over Lew like a fog.

“Lew?”

“Hi, yes, hello.” He and Dick stare at each other for a long moment. Lew says in a dreadful croak, “So I don't appear to be in a Soviet workroom.”

“No, you're safe. I got you out.” His hand fumbles over and finds Lew's; squeezes slightly.

He doesn't emphasize the _I_ , but Lew has worked intelligence too long not to notice it. He files it away for later. Instead he watches Dick some more until another laugh bubbles up.

Dick's haggard face twitches, half-irritated, half-curious. “What's so funny?” he wants to know. He still hasn't let go of Lew's hand.

“Oh, you know,” says Lew, trying to shrug against the mattress and finding that hurts too. “The things a fella has to do to get you into bed.”

  
  


_VIENNA 1948_

Two months after Dick met Lew and before Sink left for the States and his new desk job, they did an inventory of the shop's assets.

 _Lewis Nixon_ , Sink said. He sat back, frowning. People in the company often frowned when Lew's name came up, Dick had noticed. _I've half a mind to cut him loose. His information's good but his drinking's a problem._

 _We get along very well, sir._ He was still in the military habit of saying sir back then. When Sink was gone, it would fade much more quickly.

_You do, do you. You say you can use him?_

Dick and Lew had clicked immediately, to their mutual and profoundly bemused pleasure. Thinking always of work first, Dick hadn't realized the danger of this. He didn't realize lacking a need to feign pleasant in the good times would ever mean an inability to maintain it in the bad.

 _Yes, I can use him_.

Sink shrugged dismissively, mind already across the Atlantic. _Fine, then he's all yours._

Somewhere deep within himself, in a place he didn't recognize, Dick liked hearing that. The most dangerous secrets in the business were the ones you kept from yourself.


End file.
